Mike Shayne was abruptly wary without knowing why. The feeling came over him as he escorted his secretary, Lucy Hamilton, out the main door of the elegant hotel into the balmy early morning. He stopped to scrape something from the sole of his shoe, looking around as he did so.
The U-shaped Cassandra spread light. It was a towering structure of stark, modernistic architecture, the newest, glassy and fountain-prone hotel in Miami Beach. People were hustling in and out and around as if it were 1:20 in the afternoon instead of 1:20 of a Tuesday morning.
Polished cars pulled up to the main entry, the occupants greeted by the doorman in tails and top hat. Polished cars pulled away. No deep building shadows to conceal lurking purse snatchers, muggers, rapists, assassins, or any other antisocial grifter.
But Shayne smelled danger. He wished he was wearing his .45 as he took Lucy’s bicep in strong fingers and piloted her along the walk that flanked the hotel drive, his eyes busy.
“What’s the matter, Michael?”
At another time he might have chucked at the perception of the girl with the brown curls and lithe physical structure. The perception never ceased to amaze him. But at the moment his lone interest was in reaching his parked convertible. There was a gun stashed in a special compartment under the front seat.
“I’ve got that feeling, Angel,” he growled as they moved swiftly along, her heels clicking a rhythm.
Lucy glanced around. “Everything looks normal.”
“Doesn’t it?”
And then they heard the shrill scream above them.
Shayne reflexively shoved Lucy toward the strip of grass that separated the sidewalk and the Cassandra wall, turned and flattened himself in a high racing dive in the opposite direction.
He landed on the hood of a parked car. Flipping, he stared up at the spread-eagle body that was outlined against the star-filled sky. The body was up high yet, out from the row after row of wrought iron balcony railings. It seemed to be floating. Still, he knew the body was plummeting fast. He knew, too, it was the body of a woman.
A scream of terror trailed the descent, and then there was the horrible sound of splintering bones and gushing of innards squeezed through suddenly split skin.
The tepid night abruptly was quiet. Shayne sat up on the hood of the car. People had become statues. They were frozen out there.
He propelled himself from the car hood. Lucy came out from under a palm tree. She moved cautiously. “Michael?”
All hell broke loose. The statues came alive, shouted, shrilled, babbled and moved in. People rushed forward, then skidded to a halt as they saw what was on the sidewalk. It was not a pretty sight.
The expensively-dressed woman had landed on her back. She was spread and split, blood snaking along the blue of her dress. A thick substance spread from under her dark hair. Her face remained intact. It was screwed up in a combination of horror and pain.
“Michael?”
“Yeah, Angel.”
“We just met her an hour ago — in Salvadore’s suite...”
“Yeah.”
The dead woman’s name was Melody Deans.
Salvadore Aires was a Detroit multimillionaire. He was in insurance. He had the Midas touch too. Salvadore could look at an ancient and very dead volcano and it would spit valuable diamonds almost immediately.
About two years before, Shayne had successfully turned a trick for the insurance giant. It had saved Salvadore and one of his companies a bundle. But the two men could have met casually at a beach blowout and they would have finished the night together. The relationship between them was an instant thing. The large redhead liked Salvadore Aires. The lean, dark tycoon liked the Miami private investigator. It was why Shayne and Lucy Hamilton had gone to the party at the Cassandra.
“Just a small bash, Mike,” Salvadore had said over the phone. “Just a few friends stopping by; nothing really fancy.”
“The occasion?”
Salvadore Aires chuckled. “Hell, do I need an occasion, my friend? Okay, if I do, we haven’t seen one another in about a year.”
“I thought maybe you had found another wife,” the detective needled.
Salvadore’s laugh was a burst. He had had five wives. There would be a sixth. He liked having a wife. The only trouble was he liked other women too. He had the money and could make the time to humor his pleasures.
